After LucasArts closure, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy go open source

Raven Software licenses both titles under GPLv2, puts code up for download.

We're all still reeling from Disney's shuttering of LucasArts yesterday, and tributes to the once-indomitable game studio are sprouting up all over the Web. One such tribute sure to bring a smile to programmer geeks everywhere comes from development house Raven, which has this morning released the source code for its two Star Wars titles: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. The two FPS titles were released in 2002 and 2003 and continued the story of Kyle Katarn, the bounty hunter and Jedi first introduced in 1995's Dark Forces.

"We loved and appreciated the experience of getting to make Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy for LucasArts," noted Raven in a statement. "As a gift to the persistently loyal fanbase for our Jedi games and in memory of LucasArts, we are releasing the source code for both games for people to enjoy and play with."

The two titles were very popular at release, with Jedi Outcast featuring one of the first deathmatch multiplayer experiences set in the Star Wars universe. According to Kotaku Australia, the code released this morning is only for the single-player portion of both games. This is typical of source code releases for major titles, as the networking code used in multiplayer often uses licensed or proprietary chunks of code that cannot be licensed as open source. Both games are available under the GPLv2 license.

We're working on our own "Ars remembers LucasArts" tribute post, which should be up later today.

64 Reader Comments

Bravo. Jedi Outcast was one of my favorite single-player experiences growing up. They nailed the gameplay so perfectly that you can its influence on all subsequent Star Wars products. When I saw the new movies, I could tell what stances they were using. Shame about the multiplayer though.

Code is code, but I wonder how their initial licensing with LucasArts allows them to GPL the game assets? Surely there are music tracks, elements of graphical style and character names that are proprietary. I'm surprised they got away with not sanitizing those bits out for a GPL release.

Bravo. Jedi Outcast was one of my favorite single-player experiences growing up. They nailed the gameplay so perfectly that you can its influence on all subsequent Star Wars products. When I saw the new movies, I could tell what stances they were using. Shame about the multiplayer though.

Code is code, but I wonder how their initial licensing with LucasArts allows them to GPL the game assets? Surely there are music tracks, elements of graphical style and character names that are proprietary. I'm surprised they got away with not sanitizing those bits out for a GPL release.

That's what I was thinking, too. There won't be enough here to build into a playable game without significant work. Still, pretty cool!

Code is code, but I wonder how their initial licensing with LucasArts allows them to GPL the game assets? Surely there are music tracks, elements of graphical style and character names that are proprietary. I'm surprised they got away with not sanitizing those bits out for a GPL release.

They don't release the content, just the engine/executable. If you want to play the game, you either need to create your own, or legally purchase the game to use with it. This is the way that ID has done their open source releases for years with their engines.

Bravo. Jedi Outcast was one of my favorite single-player experiences growing up. They nailed the gameplay so perfectly that you can its influence on all subsequent Star Wars products. When I saw the new movies, I could tell what stances they were using. Shame about the multiplayer though.

Bravo. Jedi Outcast was one of my favorite single-player experiences growing up. They nailed the gameplay so perfectly that you can its influence on all subsequent Star Wars products. When I saw the new movies, I could tell what stances they were using. Shame about the multiplayer though.

...sigh. I'm old.

I was 50 when I got Academy. I should finish that someday.

I congratulate you on playing it at all with those tiny two-fingered forearms of yours...

Code is code, but I wonder how their initial licensing with LucasArts allows them to GPL the game assets? Surely there are music tracks, elements of graphical style and character names that are proprietary. I'm surprised they got away with not sanitizing those bits out for a GPL release.

They don't release the content, just the engine/executable. If you want to play the game, you either need to create your own, or legally purchase the game to use with it. This is the way that ID has done their open source releases for years with their engines.

There's so much fan content out there for both of these games that reverse-engineering the missing content is not that difficult - extensive, but not difficult.

Honestly, having the source code to Dark Forces 2 would have been a lot, lot better. Raven doesn't control that though, that's down to Lucasarts. And the rumor has always been that Lucasarts lost the source code a long time ago. It'd explain why the Steam release of the game featured zero bugfixes to make it run on newer OSes without issue. Even with third-party fixes to the game, it only BARELY runs now. I fear we'll soon lose the ability to play it entirely.

Someone mentioned that Jedi Outcast was the influence for all future Star Wars titles. I think you'd have to step back one more title to Dark Forces 2 to really get that. It was the first game to do a LOT of things. It was the first to use force powers, the first to provide a lightsaber, the first to have a light/dark ending, and it even introduced dual lightsabers (although not playable). And yeah, it was the first to support multiplayer with all this as well.

Jedi Academy was interesting from a single-player point of view, but the multi-player was so dumbed down that it turned into nothing but a bunch of people wailing on eachother with lightsabers with zero strategy involved (not to mention single-saber combat was essentially pointless due to its disadvantages).

Jedi Outcast wasn't much better, but the physics bugs in multiplayer actually gave the game it's own meta-game of sorts. It gave the game a much faster paced and dangerous fight than was ever intended. Especially after they fixed the horribly overpowered and broken special attacks (anyone remember the backstab and how it was an instakill to anyone who was touched by it, and that you could /move/ during the attack?).

I agree having Dark Forces 2 runnable on modern systems would be nice, its the start of the 3 part "Jedi" series spawned from the original Dark Forces.

I'll take Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy with some engine enhancements as well tho, get to it Internet! I've seen what can be done with source code from crazy Quake engine mods that made it look better than Doom 3 in some places.

Someone mentioned that Jedi Outcast was the influence for all future Star Wars titles. I think you'd have to step back one more title to Dark Forces 2 to really get that. It was the first game to do a LOT of things. It was the first to use force powers, the first to provide a lightsaber, the first to have a light/dark ending, and it even introduced dual lightsabers (although not playable). And yeah, it was the first to support multiplayer with all this as well.

It introduced it, but Outcast refined it A LOT. I'd say both have their share of the cake.

Anyone remember Mysteries of the Sith, the Jedi Knight expansion? It was rather good as I remember it. Last time I played it was on a Windows 7 system so it's not that long ago..

Honestly, having the source code to Dark Forces 2 would have been a lot, lot better. Raven doesn't control that though, that's down to Lucasarts. And the rumor has always been that Lucasarts lost the source code a long time ago.

I hear the source code was conveniently lost shortly after their divisive release of the "re-imagined special edition" game.

Loved these games, and thrilled to see Raven release the code. I look forward to seeing what the world at large will do with it.

When I read of LucasArts' closing yesterday, I immediately thought back to my time with these games. I remember the chaotic strategy of multiplayer in Outcast II, force pushing someone off a ledge, only to have them force pull me into the abyss with them.

Also, dismemberment code. Nothing like tossing your lightsaber at a character and letting it chop them into tiny charred morsels.

Honestly, having the source code to Dark Forces 2 would have been a lot, lot better. Raven doesn't control that though, that's down to Lucasarts. And the rumor has always been that Lucasarts lost the source code a long time ago.

I hear the source code was conveniently lost shortly after their divisive release of the "re-imagined special edition" game.

If Ars is doing a tribute to Lucasarts it's worth linking to at least some of the folks who worked at Lucasarts during it's golden era and posted their own thoughts on the closure like Noah Falstein and Ron Gilbert.

Anyway cool stuff Raven releasing these, I enjoyed them a lot back when they were released they got the feel of using a lightsaber sort of right for the time they came out in.

Code is code, but I wonder how their initial licensing with LucasArts allows them to GPL the game assets? Surely there are music tracks, elements of graphical style and character names that are proprietary. I'm surprised they got away with not sanitizing those bits out for a GPL release.

I don't think you've read quite carefully enough. They haven't released the game assets, just the game code. There is no art, music, textures, models, etc, included in this release. It is purely the code for the game (which is largely the Q3A engine).

Jedi Academy was interesting from a single-player point of view, but the multi-player was so dumbed down that it turned into nothing but a bunch of people wailing on eachother with lightsabers with zero strategy involved (not to mention single-saber combat was essentially pointless due to its disadvantages).

Uhh what game were you playing, and when were you playing it? Back between 2003-2005 in its hey dey most servers had normal settings with JA+ installed where people would constantly duel. There weren't that many servers with zero gravity, and if there was usually the game was unplayable.

There's actually a lot of strategy in the saber combat in the different forms and styles. There are also different types of directional slashes that deal different amounts of damage and take different length or time to perform. The trick was figuring out how to use all the moves and its timing to win battles. The clan I was part of took a lot of time training and figuring out the craft of it all and we ended up winning most of the battle we fight against other people. Other clans also realized the potential and strategy involved in order to play the game.

There were hundreds of servers at the same and most were regulated by admins who made sure the game remained civil free of lamers. Sure there were usually a giant mosh pit of saber wielding guys who would just wail at each other in the center of the level, but almost every time on every server there just as many or even more people on the side challenging each other to duel modes. Duel mode was so popular all the mods enabled on servers allowed more than one duel to occur. Future mods even caused dimensional shifting to all players in duel mode so they could walk/run through regular players who were not part of their duel so it wouldn't interfere with the fight.

Basically what I'm saying is the game was a lot more sophisticated than what the manual and what you're saying, it's too bad you missed out on that.

Jedi Academy was interesting from a single-player point of view, but the multi-player was so dumbed down that it turned into nothing but a bunch of people wailing on eachother with lightsabers with zero strategy involved (not to mention single-saber combat was essentially pointless due to its disadvantages).

Uhh what game were you playing, and when were you playing it? Back between 2003-2005 in its hey dey most servers had normal settings with JA+ installed where people would constantly duel. There weren't that many servers with zero gravity, and if there was usually the game was unplayable.

There's actually a lot of strategy in the saber combat in the different forms and styles. There are also different types of directional slashes that deal different amounts of damage and take different length or time to perform. The trick was figuring out how to use all the moves and its timing to win battles. The clan I was part of took a lot of time training and figuring out the craft of it all and we ended up winning most of the battle we fight against other people. Other clans also realized the potential and strategy involved in order to play the game.

There were hundreds of servers at the same and most were regulated by admins who made sure the game remained civil free of lamers. Sure there were usually a giant mosh pit of saber wielding guys who would just wail at each other in the center of the level, but almost every time on every server there just as many or even more people on the side challenging each other to duel modes. Duel mode was so popular all the mods enabled on servers allowed more than one duel to occur. Future mods even caused dimensional shifting to all players in duel mode so they could walk/run through regular players who were not part of their duel so it wouldn't interfere with the fight.

Basically what I'm saying is the game was a lot more sophisticated than what the manual and what you're saying, it's too bad you missed out on that.

I'm aware of all of this. I'm saying that even the result of these mods, the fights were pretty hilariously bad. Any semblence of strategy was lost when you realized that the netcode didn't even allow for your timings and strategies to work out. You were rolling the dice every time you attacked on whether your attack would even land or not due to the blocking system. They tried to make so much of it automatic and basic that it actually made it worse. There's a reason Jedi Outcast's dueling environment stuck around way longer than JA's, with few, if any mods involved.

Someone mentioned that Jedi Outcast was the influence for all future Star Wars titles. I think you'd have to step back one more title to Dark Forces 2 to really get that. It was the first game to do a LOT of things. It was the first to use force powers, the first to provide a lightsaber, the first to have a light/dark ending, and it even introduced dual lightsabers (although not playable). And yeah, it was the first to support multiplayer with all this as well.

It introduced it, but Outcast refined it A LOT. I'd say both have their share of the cake.

Anyone remember Mysteries of the Sith, the Jedi Knight expansion? It was rather good as I remember it. Last time I played it was on a Windows 7 system so it's not that long ago..

Mysteries of the Sith supplanted Jedi Knight as, and remained, my favorite multiplayer game for quite some time.

Bravo. Jedi Outcast was one of my favorite single-player experiences growing up. They nailed the gameplay so perfectly that you can its influence on all subsequent Star Wars products. When I saw the new movies, I could tell what stances they were using. Shame about the multiplayer though.

...sigh. I'm old.

I was 50 when I got Academy. I should finish that someday.

I congratulate you on playing it at all with those tiny two-fingered forearms of yours...

T. reges aren't pre-Cambrian! Almost all the Ediacaran life we know about lacked hard body parts like shells or skeletons, which makes his feat even more impressive.

Star Wars may be too violent for Disney's typical fare (and audience). You kind of have to question why they bought it in the first place. Only one with deep enough pockets?

That said, you got to wonder if this was shortsighted of Disney to shutter the game studio. So much of the gaming technology is so closely linked to to special effects used in just about every movie now! All this stuff powers Pixar too!

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.